When I reached the top of the stairs, I went straight to my room and locked the door behind me. They’d stolen the happiness the dumplings should have brought. I lingered in discomfort and willed myself to maintain control. When my emotions were finally in check, then, and only then, would I allow myself to relax.
And purge.
2
Eli
It took Caleb longer to reach out than I’d anticipated. After the blunder with his sister, I had dreaded that call all afternoon. I’d half expected him to find me before the day ended, but when I went by his office in the gym after the final bell, his light was out and the door locked. Then I’d seen Colbie in the halls and tried to stop her, but even when she had looked right at me, she had waved me off as quickly as she had after she put me in my place.
The last thing I wanted to do was piss off my best friend or his family. The Chapmans had been good to me while I was at UGA and treated me like one of their own anytime they were in town. My parents hadn’t been able to make it to many games during my career. Not because they hadn’t wanted to, but circumstances had prevented it. They watched every televised broadcast and bragged to all their friends. I knew they were proud even if they couldn’t be there. But the Chapmans welcomed me as though Caleb and I had known each other all our lives.
With Caleb’s wedding this weekend and the rehearsal dinner on Friday, I didn’t want to have tension between any of us, including Colbie. I couldn’t pull my thoughts away from how I’d completely screwed up that introduction. Never in my wildest dreams had I figured she hadn’t ever heard my name. Not because I had been one of the fastest running backs in UGA’s history, rather because I was tight with her family. And they were tight. Foolishly, I’d assumed when I told Caleb she would be in my class that he would have given her a heads-up, but that hadn’t happened. And as a result, I stuck my foot in my mouth and now had to do damage control.
When my phone finally rang, I sat on my back porch with a beer in hand and a citronella candle burning on the table next to me in hopes the mosquitos didn’t eat me alive.
“Hey, man. I hear you met Critter today.”
“Critter?” I chuckled at the reference and thought of a woodland creature, which Colbie was anything but.
“Yeah, it’s my sister’s nickname. Guess it doesn’t really suit her anymore.”
He was correct in that assumption, but I didn’t voice my opinion.
“So, how’d you manage to ruffle her feathers? She’s a good student…I know she didn’t do anything to get in trouble.”
I groaned, knowing how stupid this would sound. “She came in late.”
“And?”
“And, nothing. She was late to class, and I made sure they all knew it wasn’t acceptable.”
“How’d you go from her coming in after the bell to insinuating she expected an easy A?” Caleb was humored by the situation. I, however, was not.
“I never said she expected an easy A.” My fingers tangled in my hair, and I pulled at the roots instead of expressing my frustration. “I kept her after class to apologize to her. At that point, I might have mentioned our friendship and that having no bearing on my expectations of her.”
The sound of his laughter had never grated on my nerves in the past, not even on drunken nights at frat parties. “Did you not listen to a word I said about her when we were in school, man?”
That right there was the problem. Caleb’s description of his sibling had been far from accurate. And the last picture I’d seen of her, she couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. “You almost never talked about her, but what little information you offered about her said she was a music nerd. I could give you the stats of all five of your brothers from the time they started playing ball, but dude, you didn’t talk about Colbie.”
“Huh.” He paused, seemingly to contemplate the notion. “I guess not. We aren’t close. She’s tight with Caden, but I didn’t see her much after I left home. And when I came back, Chasity came with me. My time is still spent on the field, and hers is still spent at a piano or with her nose in a book.”
“That would’ve been good information to have had…yesterday. Shit, Chapman. You’re killing me.”
“You don’t have to worry about Colbie expecting any kind of special treatment. And you won’t have to worry about her putting in the work in your class. She’s a brainiac, and the only girl I’ve ever known who was more interested in education than socializing.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, she and her best friend, Jess, swore off guys right before their freshman year. I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard and laughed when she announced it at the dinner table one night when I was home from school.”
“Was there a reason?”
“She wants to be a doctor like my dad. And the two of them, Jess and her, are neck and neck for the valedictorian title at graduation. Personally, I don’t get it, but she wants it, and knowing Critter, she’ll do whatever it takes to make sure she gets top billing.”
Jesus, I wondered if I could have insulted her any more than I had. Telling an honor student you weren’t going to let them slide was like the coach threatening to bench a star player during their rival game.
“Is she pissed?” I had to know how much I needed to do between now and Friday night to smooth things over.
“Dude, who cares? She’s a kid. You’re her teacher. Don’t sweat it.”
But I did care. Colbie Chapman wasn’t the Critter that Caleb portrayed. Somewhere along the way, her big brother had missed her growing up. And she might be a bookworm, but I admired anyone who set a goal and went after it. And for a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old kid to set their sights on being the number one student in their class, and then achieving it…that blew my mind.
I hung up a few minutes later but remained on my porch, listening to the crickets chirp as the sky went dark. Colbie Chapman plagued my mind. There’d been fear in her eyes when she looked up from her backpack, then embarrassment flushed her pale complexion when the other kids in the class snickered. At the time, I’d had no idea what I’d done. She was the girl the nerds chased. There is a hierarchy in every sect of the high school population from the band to the jocks, and she was it for the intellectuals. Couple her brain with her insanely good looks, and you had perfection.
I could only imagine she’d never been chastised in class, and I’d done that to her for no other reason than to prove a point that hadn’t needed to be made. Kids like her thrived on perfection, and I’d pointed out a flaw—publicly. Although, I had to give her credit. She had brass kahunas. The same demure smile I’d seen on her mother’s face a thousand times and the polite way she’d said “sir” had thrown me. She’d been raised with Southern grace, but there was a streak of piss and vinegar in there, too. And when the time came, she had put me in my place…right before she walked out my door.
* * *
I struggled the next couple of days not to focus on her in third period. Part of me wanted to give her the opportunity to shine, but the other thought it might be better to ignore our first encounter and treat it as though it had never happened. Yet I knew the night I graded their first assignment, this girl was in a league all her own. Even her friend Jess was no competition academically. As much as I wanted to believe the quality of work she had turned in was an effort to prove a point, I quickly learned through teacher-breakroom gossip that wasn’t the case. Colbie Chapman was every faculty members’ best student. Analytically, she was years ahead of her classmates. Her writing was beyond a college level. And she could critique literary works well beyond her years. This girl wasn’t just after valedictorian; she wanted to conquer the world.
Even though she engaged in class, she refused to engage with me. Colbie had no problem debating theory with other students, yet when I challenged her, she shut down. It had only been a few days, but I’d never had a problem warming the hearts of my students. Quite the opposite—I’d struggled, and still did, with th
e females. Only being a handful of years older than most who sat in the chairs in my classroom, coupled with being male, always led to at least one or two trying to get closer than they should. The workload usually squashed any notions of romance they might have, and if that didn’t, their grades on the first test did.
Third period was my only AP English class, and it should have been the most enjoyable. These were all bright kids, and I wanted to push their boundaries and encourage them to think beyond a textbook. We’d covered a lot of material in the first week of school, and romantic poetry wasn’t a topic that excited very many high school seniors, at least not when they thought in the context of Wadsworth, Byron, or Shelley.
“Assignment for the weekend.” Unlike my other classes throughout the day, I didn’t get a lot of grumbling from the AP students. “Find a song released in the last twenty years and outline the romantic elements. It should provoke emotion, celebrate nature and beauty, and hone in on the critical fundamental elements of the period.”
Kids like these needed more structure, more direction in the assignment. Before the questions started, I answered what few I would in order to guide them, but a large part of the task was figuring out how romanticism still existed in modern-day…even if it wasn’t written in iambic pentameter.
“There’s no set page requirement. I don’t care what type of music you pick. You will read the song to the class on Wednesday, and fifty percent of your grade on this assignment will be determined by your ability to convince me of the romantic-era roots in the lyrics.”
Mouths dropped while I spoke. It was unconventional, and it would give me a glimpse into who they were as individuals. The song they chose would be largely defined by the music they listened to, yet what they idealized in the words would open them up to more than just singing a popular song.
Hands went up all around the room. One by one they asked questions I refused to answer. There was no right or wrong choice in what they picked or how they interpreted it. Music, like poetry, is all subjective. With a minute before the bell, the class chattered about the assignment, some with excitement and others, nervous hesitation.
Colbie stared straight ahead.
“Ms. Chapman, is everything all right?” I straightened papers on my desk as I spoke, but when I hadn’t received an immediate response, I glanced up to meet her gaze. There was something in her eyes I couldn’t place—haunting almost.
“Yes, sir.” And there was the canned response I anticipated.
She raced out with Jess at her side as quickly as the bell allowed. My gaze followed her and her friend out the door. I’d spent a good deal of time with every other member of the Chapman family, and Colbie was nothing like any of them. If she weren’t the spitting image of her siblings, I’d swear she’d been adopted or even switched at birth. But Colbie looked just like her brothers, only in a much more attractive, female version. As far as I could tell, that was where the similarities stopped. It would be interesting to see if she were really that vastly different when they were all in the same room tonight.
* * *
I’d been to enough weddings since I graduated from college to know they were a big deal in the South. Caleb came from a large family, and they came from money, as did Chasity. I was one of eleven groomsmen. Their wedding party was enormous and the guest list even more extensive. Although, the number of people standing at the altar with Caleb and his fiancée wasn’t what surprised me. It was the fact that his sister wasn’t one of them.
With twenty-two bridesmaids and groomsmen, two flower girls, and a ring bearer, the sanctuary of the church was a madhouse. As I stood in my assigned spot waiting for instructions—because walking down an aisle and then back up with a woman on my arm was difficult to do without coaching—my attention waned from the wedding organizer calling out demands. I scanned the room, taking in the effects—the pews, the stained-glass windows, the crowd. My eyes drifted from one person to the next—noting those I hadn’t seen since graduation—when they landed firmly on the dark-haired woman in the middle of an empty pew.
She was hard not to notice and not just because of the isolation. Colbie didn’t dress to stand out at school and wore very little—if any—makeup, but tonight, she might as well have been a beacon. Even as far off as she sat, it was easy to see Caleb’s sister wasn’t a child, she was a stunning woman. Albeit, she appeared sad and terribly lonely, but maybe that was because she was the only member of the Chapman family who wasn’t in the wedding party. Or possibly because her parents sat on the front row, beaming with pride at Caleb and Chasity, while their only daughter waited silently. It was possible she hadn’t wanted to be in the wedding, although something told me she hadn’t been asked, not that she’d refused.
I lost track of her momentarily as the people in the processional moved outside the sanctuary to run through the motions again, but when we came back in and I resumed my spot, she still sat stoically on the wooden bench. Not on a cell phone, no book in hand, not engaging with any of the one hundred people here. And I couldn’t help but wonder why. The wedding planner finally seemed satisfied after our fifth run-through, and the group moved to the country club where the Chapmans were members for the rehearsal dinner.
Colbie spoke with her parents briefly and left with the rest of us. While everyone else rode with several others, she’d gone by herself. I hung back with the rest of the guys I knew and had gone to school with, waiting on Caleb. He kissed his bride, promising he’d meet her there, and she left with her friends. His brothers made their exit soon after.
As Caleb and I walked to my truck, I asked the question that was none of my business. “Hey, man. Why isn’t your sister in the wedding?”
“She and Chas just don’t click.”
“And your parents were okay with that?”
“What were they going to say, Eli? It’s not like they’re paying for the ceremony. Plus, it’s not Colbie’s cup of tea. Trust me, she doesn’t care.”
The conversation ended there. It wasn’t my place to pry, and I didn’t need to create undue stress. If I could have gotten out of wearing a penguin suit for this event, I would have, so maybe he was right.
The club was reserved for the Chapman party, and they offered the largest buffet of food I’d ever seen. I kept spotting my student through the crowd, always alone. None of her family members, immediate or extended, appeared to do more than briefly interact with her before moving on, and even that was in passing. I shouldn’t be concerned about it, yet somehow, I was dumbfounded by how the rest of the family was this tightly woven cloth while she hung on like a tattered thread.
I’d envied the Chapmans since I’d met them my freshman year. They did everything together, supported each other, hung out together. From the oldest to the youngest, when I saw one, they were all there. It never dawned on me how odd it was that the only female in a menagerie of males was never present. Since I hadn’t met her, I hadn’t had any reason to give it any thought, yet now that I had, it baffled me.
Caleb had never given any indication that she was a troubled teen, but when I looked back at the conversations with or about his family, her name almost never came up.
With a plate of food in hand, I searched the room for an empty seat and found my mind’s subject sitting at a table with a smattering of vacant chairs. No one occupied the space to her left or right. I shouldn’t do it, but something about her called to me, drew me in. Not surprisingly, Colbie didn’t even give me a sideways glance when I joined her.
“Hey. Mind if I sit here?” I tried to keep my tone light. For all I knew, she’d had a fight with someone and didn’t want to be here.
My heart nearly stopped when her head turned in my direction. Her eyes were the palest blue I’d ever seen, and I silently questioned if they’d be sensitive to light without more pigment to protect them against the harmful rays of the sun. The smoky makeup accentuated the shade of her irises and made her creamy complexion appear flawless.
“No, sir.” A fli
cker of something passed over her expression, but she had an incredible poker face.
I knew nothing about her other than a few useless facts and couldn’t think of anything to say. My silence resulted in her focus returning to the massive plate of food in front of her.
“Please, call me Eli.” The words came out before I realized what I said.
“That’s probably not appropriate.”
It wasn’t; nonetheless, I desperately wanted to draw her out of her shell. And maybe if she didn’t see me as her teacher, at least not tonight, she might let me in just a little.
“Dr. Paxton is pretty formal when we’re not at school, but I can’t think of anything you might be comfortable with.”
Without missing a beat, she shot back, “Oh, I can think of a laundry list of things I’d be comfortable with, but Emily Post might roll over in her grave if I used them.”
Her bite was entertaining. There weren’t many people who attempted to put me in my place, certainly never students, and rarely a woman. “Do tell.”
“Hitler, Douche, Dr. Dictator, Castro, Stalin…the list is endless.” The side of her lip quivered as she fought a smile.
I set down my fork and wiped my mouth with a napkin. “I’m sorry, Colbie. My behavior the first day of school was over the top. It’s tough being a new teacher. Add relocating at the last minute to work at your best friend’s alma mater, and it becomes a bit intimidating. I was worried the faculty would question why I’d been given the job, and with four Chapman kids in the school, I didn’t want favoritism to be thrown around. It wasn’t fair to you, nor was it your fault.”
Dark waves fell as she took a bite, but she quickly swiped it back behind her ear. “Thank you.” It was always the right side of her hair that bothered her, yet she always moved it with her left hand, crossing her body.
Her Perfect Page 3
